notes on The Nature of Consciousness, Rupert Spira

Notes from video: The Nature of Consciousness, Rupert Spira

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-IIzAblVlg&t=1328s

"If we want to speak the truth about the nature of consciousness, experience, or reality we would have to remain silent. And that is why it is said that the highest teaching is silence.

"However, very few of us are sufficiently mature enough to intuit the nature of consciousness from silence,and therefore the spiritual traditions have elaborated various paths, various skillful means to tailor to various levels of our understanding. So it is in that spirit that I speak of the nature of consciousness.

"And the first thing I would like to do is to give a definition of consciousness, of course consciosness cannot be defined. But this would be a good provisional definition of consciousness:

Consciousness is that in which all experience appears,

it is that with which all experience is known

and it is that out of which all experience is made."

---

@6:49

"Establish again that your thoughts appear in an aware, space-like field. And now listen to whatever sounds are present. Suddenly everything goes strangely silent. *laughter* Listen to sounds of people talking, or whatever sounds are present. And now with your attention go back and forth between the thought and the sound. Ask yourself the question, 'Does my attention ever leave the field of awareness?' Notice that the sound appears in exactly the same field as the thought appears in. Conventional thinking would have us believe that the thought appears inside what I am, and that the sound appears outside what I am. But if we look for the line that divides the two in our actual experience, it is never found. The line is in the map but never on the territory. The line is in belief but never in experience."

@8:

"'Does my attention ever leave awareness?'" 

@12:30

" 

"Whether we know it or not, all of our ...are founded upon this assumption. 

 @17

"In the first question there is a subtle presumption, which turns out in the end to be a belief, in fact it is a religion, it is the religion of materialism. In the first question is, 'What is the Universe made of?' Nobody has ever found the Universe. Has anybody here ever had an experience of the Universe, as it is conceived to be? 

So what are we exploring when are trying to explore the nature of the Universe? We are trying to explore the nature of something which we don't experience. All we know of the Universe is a series of fleeting perceptions. And perceptions appear in consciousness. Therefore, until we know the nature of the consciousness  in which our perceptions appear, it is not possible to know anything that is true about the perceptions themselves.

 @18:20

That is why I believe that one day, the highest science will no longer be considered the science of physics, it will be the new science of consciousness. Because until we know the nature of consciousness, it is not possible to know the nature of anything that appears within it.Until we know the nature of the knowing with which we know our experience, it is not possible to know anything true about the known."

@20:54

"So, how are we going to find out about the nature of consciousness, or awareness. We first have to find out what it is that knows the experience of awareness. Only that can tell us anything about its nature. If I were to ask you the question, 'Are you aware?' Everyone, I hope, would pause for a moment, refer to their experience, and answer, 'Yes.' What happens in that pause? Ask yourself the question again, 'Am I aware?' And just remain, for a while, in that pause, before thought answers. 'Yes.' That pause is a gap between two thoughts: the first thought, 'Am I aware?', the second thought. 'Yes.' During the first thought, 'Am I aware?' we are yet quite sure that we are aware, and by the time the second thought appears we are absolutely certain that I am aware. In other words, the certainty of being aware takes place in between those two thoughts. In other words, it doesn't take place in the mind. When we hear the question, 'Am I aware?' awareness directs itself towards the question. At the end of the question, there is a pause in which awareness has nowhere to direct itself, and as a result it collapses for a moment, it sinks back for a moment, into its self, into its source, and then it rises again in the form of the answer, 'Yes.' 

@20:44

 "In other words, in this pause, awareness tastes itself momentarily. In the pause between the question, 'Am I aware?' and the answer, 'Yes.' we become aware that we are aware. Not only am I aware, but I am aware that I am aware. In other words, in that pause, consciousness knows itself, it recognizes its own being. It is consciousness itself that knows that it is conscious. It is awareness itself that recognizes its own being. In other words, only awareness can know anything about awareness. The finite mind, that is thought and perception, can tell us nothing of awareness. It is an expression of awareness, it is made of awareness, but it cannot know anything about awareness. Because the finite mind can only know something subjective."

Also a lovely poem from the video comments which does indeed seem to sum it all up:

The Lover and The Beloved God is love. And love must love. And to love there must be a Beloved. But since God is Existence infinite and eternal there is no one for Him to love but Himself. And in order to love Himself, He must imagine Himself as the Beloved whom He as the lover imagines He loves. Beloved and lover implies separation. And separation creates longing; and longing causes search. And the wider and more intense the search, the greater the separation and the more terrible the longing. When longing is at its most intense point, separation is complete, and the purpose of separation, which was that love might experience itself as lover and Beloved, is fulfilled; and union follows. And when union is attained, the lover knows that he himself was all along the Beloved, whom he loved and desired union with; and that all the impossible situations that he overcame were obstacles which he himself had placed in the path to himself. To attain union is so impossibly difficult because it is impossible to become what you already are! Union is nothing other than knowledge of oneself as the Only One. ----Meher Baba